Morning Service for Lent 3 2024
The Ten Commandments are a sobering read – they become the terms of God’s third covenant with Israel. The first to Noah, the second to Abraham and now this third to the freed Hebrew slaves in the wilderness. According to the writer of the book of Exodus these Ten Commandments were given by the voice of God himself from the holy mountain of Sinai, in fear and trembling the people heard them.
Morning Service for Lent 2 2024
Today’s first two readings are about having faith and, indeed, justification by faith – being put right with God by faith– is a key Protestant belief and was crucial for Martin Luther. This was contrasted with doing good as a sort of scoring system; I will be put right with God by doing more and more good deeds or in Luther’s time giving more and more money to the Roman Church for the re-building of St Peter’s, Rome.
Morning Service for the first Sunday in Lent 2024
The name Satan comes from the Greek, Satanas, which is in turn a transliteration of the Aramaic, satana. The character first appears in Jewish literature in the book of Job, where he is simply hassatan, the accuser, one of the servants of God. In later literature he developed into an evil power, the opponent of God, seeking to destroy the relationship between God and man. It is difficult not to ascribe this development to the influence of the dualistic religions of Israel’s near neighbours, such as the Zoroastrians in Persia.